Glint
by lee lovina
Summary: A glint, and she's outside of herself, carefully pointing the knife on his heart.


The clock strikes twelve, and Hermione Granger opens her eyes.

Midnight.

It is time.

Shaking slightly, she sits up, glancing around the room. Everybody else is asleep. Peaceful and oblivious to the fact that a murder is about to occur just a few hundred feet away from where they lay.

Hermione would gladly change places with them. Ignorance must be a bliss.

She takes deep, steadying breaths. She has to be brave. She has to remember why she is doing this. For the sake of her friends. Of the whole Wizarding world. Of all the people who are bound to be killed, or were already killed under his wrath and mercy.

She is doing this for the greater good.

Her breathing picks up. Her fingers shake as she picks up her Time-Turner and slides it around her neck. The cold, metal chain rubs against her neck, and she cringes. Her hand slithers under her pillow, closing around the large kitchen knife she had acquired from one of the house-elves. It looks shiny. New. She is attracted to the beautiful glint it makes in the dim moonlight. Her face tentatively closes in, putting away the fact of what this blade is about to do.

She meets a girl.

Her face is pale and set, her jaw tense. Tendrils of curly brown hair frames her face, the rest of it tied into a messy ponytail. Her cheeks are chiseled, her forehead wide. She has a long, delicate nose, and a slightly pointed chin. The girl stares at her, emotionless. Cleverness is etched on her face, and though she looks blank, there is a certain pride and arrogance, something that made her self-assured.

She looks beautiful.

Hermione's finger reaches out, tracing the girl's eye. It must be her most remarkable characteristic. They are several shades darker than her hair, closing in to black. They are tight, and cold, and blank, with soft curly lashes framing it. Hermione lets out a breath.

"I want to be you," she whispers.

A glint and she's outside of herself.

Her hand tightens around the blade. Another mysterious glint, and a sense of finality and assurance washes over her. She stands, looking down once. It seems foolish to do this while she is in her bathrobe, but the time feels right. Her wand is at ready with the knife behind her back. She is barefoot as she takes careful steps down the stairs, the greenish light growing brighter.

She is in the Slytherin Common Room.

It has always had this secretive and dangerous air about it that Hermione used to appreciate. Now it is what she hates. There are no more things to learn. There are no more things to discover. There are no more things to know. It is just her, and him.

Her eyes land on the boy dozing in the armchair, near the fireplace. His face is bathed in green light. It distorts, the eyes turning snakelike and the nostrils turning to slits. The skin stretches, the hair disappears.

A thousand memories come back.

Harry's scream, pain and determination in his voice as he tells them about the Sorcerer's Stone. Ron's hopelessness in the tent as he listens about the possible sufferings his family is experiencing. Her own parents, oblivious and without a care as she erases their memories. Sirius' face in the cave, looking hollow and tired. Neville's attack when he hears a person mocking his parents. Draco's haggard face, the struggle to keep up his façade clearly showing as she steals a glance at him from the Gryffindor Table. All the grief and pain and deaths...

The feeling of hatred intensifies.

She stands a couple of feet away from him. The smell of vanilla and roses rouses him, and his eyelids flutters. Hermione's face hardens as he opens his eyes.

"_Petrifctus Totalus_."

Tom's whole body goes rigid. His position causes him to fall to ground with a hard thud, and there he lay, unable to move. Shock and disbelief flashes through his eyes as Hermione stares at him, still standing, showing no mercy. She kneels beside him, taking out the knife.

She carefully points it at his heart.

Hurt registers in his eyes. He barely looks at the knife on his chest and the mocking expression Hermione adopted, to insult him in his means of dying. He stares at her face, waiting, and she makes the mistake of looking right into his eyes.

Long fingers are on the piano keys, her own stopping his and correcting his wrong notes. The laughs. The smiles. The cold afternoons they spent in comfortable silence. just staring at each other. The first time he strikes out, the first time she cries, and yet she still reaches out for his hand the next day. Both of them staring out the window. The nights spent on the Astronomy Tower, with the whispers and the stars. The rose. Intertwined hands. Long letters at midnight. Their smirks when one asks the other for help in a certain subject. The inside jokes. The times spent at the library. The first time he gives away a hint of a smile.

_"You've changed me."_

A glint and a tear trickles down her cheek.

She purses her lips before a sob comes out. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her free hand brushes away his curls from his eyes as she opens hers. Her hand travels to his cheek, caressing it with her thumb.

"I don't want to," she whispers, and his eyes are glued to hers, hanging on to every word. "But you don't know what you're going to become."

She lets go of the knife, setting it down on the floor. She tugs at the chain of her Time-Turner, letting the little hourglass fall on her chest. His eyes move to hers again.

All the life has drained out of it.

Her hands reaches for his face and the knife.

She speaks no words but she knows he knows what she's trying to say.

As she leans in and kisses him, she drives the knife forward, through his heart.

It is done.

* * *

A/N: This is Tom-centric, and if you want to understand or connect the events together, look in my bio.


End file.
